Why disguise the fact that JtR was educated?

[packers stem]

If the author actually had an Irish accent, he would not write it. We have people on Casebook from all over the world, with easily more than a dozen different accents represented. We all write the same.

Not always.
I have a friend who always writes his Facebook posts using his Geordie (Newcastle upon Tyne) slang.
Sometimes takes a fair bit of deciphering

[Abby Normal]

Also, wouldn't a hoaxer be more inclined to sign the letter jack the ripper?

[Abby Normal]

I seem to recall that a doctor wrote a letter to the press expressing that opinion, but I may be imagining it. Don't think so, though.

BTW, a lot of what we "know" about the Lusk kidney has come down to us via some dodgy press reports and even dodgier police memoirs. Reader beware!

Hi Sam and errata

Both Openshaw and brown, who examined the kidney, came to the conclusion that it was a human kidney.

[Abby Normal]

Pretty good probably. Preserving flesh is not like, say, brewing liquor where the longer you leave it the more potent it is. There is a saturation point, and beyond that keeping the thing in the solution really only serves as storage. I mean your pickles aren't more pickled after being in your fridge for a month, you know? And a scientist would have no way of knowing how long a pickle had been sitting in pickling solution, because once it hits the saturation point, thats it. So pickled for a month or pickled for a week, it's the same. As long as it's been pickled long enough to hit the saturation point.

Kidneys are made to absorb, much more so than muscle tissue. So once all the tissue sucks up alcohol the process is complete. I'd say a week, although it could be as short as 48 hours. Alcohol sort of cooks flesh in a weird way, so it's like a steak. Once it's cooked, it's cooked. It cannot go back to raw, and you cannot tell when something was cooked by examining it. At best you can tell how long the piece of flesh was allowed to decay before it was preserved. Which isn't that helpful unless it was left to rot longer ago than the murder occurred. Which would be super weird.

Which kidney was removed from eddowes and which one was sent to lusk?

[Errata]

Wonder just what the odds would be of your average prankster choosing materials and a process that might make it appear that the timing is right for it to be Eddowes'?

Pretty good probably. Preserving flesh is not like, say, brewing liquor where the longer you leave it the more potent it is. There is a saturation point, and beyond that keeping the thing in the solution really only serves as storage. I mean your pickles aren't more pickled after being in your fridge for a month, you know? And a scientist would have no way of knowing how long a pickle had been sitting in pickling solution, because once it hits the saturation point, thats it. So pickled for a month or pickled for a week, it's the same. As long as it's been pickled long enough to hit the saturation point.

Kidneys are made to absorb, much more so than muscle tissue. So once all the tissue sucks up alcohol the process is complete. I'd say a week, although it could be as short as 48 hours. Alcohol sort of cooks flesh in a weird way, so it's like a steak. Once it's cooked, it's cooked. It cannot go back to raw, and you cannot tell when something was cooked by examining it. At best you can tell how long the piece of flesh was allowed to decay before it was preserved. Which isn't that helpful unless it was left to rot longer ago than the murder occurred. Which would be super weird.

[Pcdunn]

And if you have handwriting like mine??

I have left-handed writing, I'm afraid! Make of that what you will!
Actually, due to getting some chronic pain in my hands (likely arthitis), I often type rather more than write, lately.

[GUT]

^^^ Interesting point, but we all have spell-checkers, and auto-correction, too.

I read recently that the "Sor" in the Lusk letter (long believed to be Irish, or "stage" Irish) has been examined recently and seems to be recognized now as "Sir" written with a looped and un-dotted "i"... Don't know if it's so, but if so, the writer may have been neither uneducated or a hoaxer, just rather poor at forming his letters.

And if you have handwriting like mine??

[Pcdunn]

^^^ Interesting point, but we all have spell-checkers, and auto-correction, too.

I read recently that the "Sor" in the Lusk letter (long believed to be Irish, or "stage" Irish) has been examined recently and seems to be recognized now as "Sir" written with a looped and un-dotted "i"... Don't know if it's so, but if so, the writer may have been neither uneducated or a hoaxer, just rather poor at forming his letters.

[Damaso Marte]

A Casebook thread actually convinced me that the Lusk letter is false. Somebody posted about "stage Irish" - when a British play had a character who was Irish, that character's lines were written in a way that imitated an Irish accent by misspelling the words in a way that imitated the stereotypical Irish way of pronouncing them.

The Lusk letter was written in stage Irish.

If the author actually had an Irish accent, he would not write it. We have people on Casebook from all over the world, with easily more than a dozen different accents represented. We all write the same.

[GUT]

I seem to recall that a doctor wrote a letter to the press expressing that opinion, but I may be imagining it. Don't think so, though.

BTW, a lot of what we "know" about the Lusk kidney has come down to us via some dodgy press reports and even dodgier police memoirs. Reader beware!

That applies to almost anything we know of the case.

[Sam Flynn]

Did any of the doctors at the time say they thought it wasn't human?

Not to my knowledge

I seem to recall that a doctor wrote a letter to the press expressing that opinion, but I may be imagining it. Don't think so, though.

BTW, a lot of what we "know" about the Lusk kidney has come down to us via some dodgy press reports and even dodgier police memoirs. Reader beware!

[curious]

The only way to know it was even human is a DNA test.

And the timing on the preservation is highly changeable. Higher alcohol content, different additives, temperature, a vacuum... if you've ever tried to pickle something you know how delicate such processes are.

Wonder just what the odds would be of your average prankster choosing materials and a process that might make it appear that the timing is right for it to be Eddowes'?

[Errata]

Thanks Errata
Did any of the doctors at the time say they thought it wasn't human?

Not to my knowledge, but they were primed to think it was human. Frankly the most scientifically honest answer would be to say that they couldn't determine the origin of the kidney. And had they handed it off to some biologist without telling him where it came from, that's the answer they would have gotten. Possibly human was the most they could get.

And it may have been human. It may have been a very good guess. But it was still a guess.

[Abby Normal]

They didn't judge the amount of time the kidney had been in spirits. Thy judged how long it had been out of the body before preserving it in spirits. So a kidney out of a body for a day and in spirits for a month is going to be almost identical to a kidney that had been out of the body for a day and in spirits for a week. So a prankster who almost immediately put a kidney in spirits and left it there for about 48 hours was going to look like it could have been Eddowes kidney.

They couldn't tell what species it was, they couldn't tell what gender it was, they couldn't actually tell if it was a right or left kidney despite the fact they thought they could, and they weren't working with a whole kidney, just a part. And it might not have been a big enough part to know for sure it was a kidney, though given the differences of the average kidney I would trust that determination. And unfortunately the preservation technique used creates the same kind of damage to the organ as kidney disease. So they couldn't even tell if the kidney had been damaged before being immersed unless somehow they found scar tissue, which wasn't found in Eddowes other kidney, so that would be weird. They really had nothing other than there was a kidney missing and heres a nub of a kidney. Which is absolutely suggestive, but clearly they had been getting a boatload of prank letters, so a certain amount of suspicion would be warranted...

I get that a guy looking at it under a microscope would find enough there to feel dread. But the biology and the optics of the era simply weren't good enough. The could tel a chicken kidney from human one because of size differences. But without either seeing the kidney come out, or being able to match the piece they had with a kidney in situ, the way they matched the piece of cloth to the apron, they had no way to know. They could make guesses, and in certain instances make good guesses. But they couldn't know for sure. So if we want to doubt, we have good reason to.

Thanks Errata
Did any of the doctors at the time say they thought it wasn't human?

[Abby Normal]

Yes, it is. In my view, it's a strong bet that the Lusk kidney was that of a pig.

what was it in the view of the doctors that looked at it Sam?